The Thin Blue Line (The Empire's Corps Book 9) (v5.1) (43 page)

She walked over to another console and watched as the shuttles flew towards Island One. It had taken nearly an hour of argument before the visitors had agreed to allow Island One’s shuttles to pick them up, rather than use their own. They had to agree it was more secure – and everyone would be under the same restriction – but it didn't befit their dignity. Belinda wasn't surprised, but she was more than a little disappointed. The Fall of Earth should have told them just how serious the situation had become.

One by one, the shuttles landed, their occupants greeted by the Governor and his team of advisors. Island One’s staff had done a good job, Belinda conceded reluctantly, at assigning the visitors to houses of their own. The Governor spoke a few brief words of greeting – he used the same words every time – and then allowed the staff to take the visitors to the assigned quarters. Perhaps the sheer luxury of the space habitat would help them to relax, Belinda considered, or perhaps they’d see it as an attempt to soften them up before negotiations began. There was no way to know.

“Keep an eye on them,” she warned, as she wandered back to the near-orbit display. “And let me know if anything changes.”

She scowled up at the display. The starships were still watching each other, but so far nothing had gone seriously wrong. But the presence of so much firepower, under so many different commands, worried her. There hadn't been anything like it since the Unification Wars. Would they really fire on their former comrades? Or bombard a planet that was almost as important, historically speaking, as Earth?

Probably
, she thought. Apart from the Marines, who shared the same basic training regardless of their eventual destination, there was no truly unified military force within the Empire. The Imperial Navy had long been assigned to homeports, the Imperial Army’s regiments were raised from separate planets, as was the Civil Guard.
They’re no longer capable of being loyal to an abstract concept like the Empire.

The thought bothered her more than she cared to admit. It was impossible to ignore the fact that someone had destroyed the Slaughterhouse, that the Marine Corps was homeless and largely friendless. What would happen to
them
if the conference failed? She looked back at the image of the Governor, greeting yet another party of newcomers, and gritted her teeth. That damned family would not hesitate to find a use for the Corps – or destroy them. In either case, nothing would survive of the Marines.

They never trusted us
, she thought, thinking of the Grand Senate. The Marine Corps was designed to resist outside influence, swearing loyalty to the Emperor and the Imperial Constitution. They’d never been infiltrated by patronage networks and corrupted into servitude to their political superiors.
And now they have a chance to destroy us once and for all
.

Pushing the bitterness aside, she found a chair and forced herself to relax.

***

“This is an outrage,” a woman snapped. “We cannot be searched.”

Glen somehow managed to keep his face expressionless as the woman snapped and snarled at his subordinates. He’d expected trouble with the delegates, but so far most of it seemed to have come from their subordinates rather than the governors themselves. The men and women who had risen high by clinging to the coattails of powerful men seemed more inclined to stand on their dignity and resist any form of search procedure, even when it was definitely necessary.

“You cannot enter the station until you have been scanned, along with your luggage,” he said, tiredly. Hadn't he been fresh this morning, only an hour ago? “Your superior, Governor Niles, accepted the restrictions when he agreed to attend the conference.”

“But surely those restrictions don’t apply to
me
,” the woman protested.

Glen looked at her. Her file had been largely blank, apart from a name, which was worrying. He would have thought lover, or courtesan, but Governor Niles wasn’t known for moderation in his desires, or for trying to hide them. Someone brought along for sexual purposes would have been listed as such. But the woman was ugly, and alarmingly fat, so huge it was clear she cared nothing for her appearance. An hour in the surgery – or any half-way decently designed autodoc – would strip the fat from her body, then adjust her appearance to match the latest fashions for beauty.

“They apply to everyone,” he said. “Please step into the scanner or I will have no choice, but to hold you here until Governor Niles can be informed. I’m sure he would be pleased with you for delaying procedures.”

The woman gave him a long look, then smiled suddenly. “Can't you pat me down instead?”

“No,” Glen said. A pat-down wouldn’t reveal any implants, let alone anything else that might be missed. Besides, it was much less personal. “Please step into the scanner.”

He watched as the woman stepped into the device, then pressed a key, activating the scan. It ran quickly, revealing almost nothing apart from a neural link and a replacement eye. Glen was unwillingly impressed. He’d looked the woman in the eye more than once and hadn't realised that one of them had been replaced by an artificial eye. A camera, he guessed, recording everything it saw for later analysis. And that probably meant he was looking at the Governor’s personal PR manager.

The woman leaned forward. “Have you finished undressing me yet?”

Glen ignored her, concentrating on the scan. Her body was stronger than he’d expected, with some genetic enhancement boosting her muscles, but there was no biological danger. There was nothing else to worry him, nothing that posed a threat. He checked her neural link anyway, out of habit, then stepped back to allow the woman to step out of the scanner. She was clean.

“You can proceed through the gate,” he said, pointing to the gate in the distance. “Once you’re through, you will be escorted to the rest of your party.”

He sighed as the woman waddled off, then turned to meet the next one. His instincts started screaming at once, telling him that he was looking at a soldier. The young man didn't smile or show any other trace of emotion. He merely stepped into the scanner and waited. Glen tapped a switch and watched as the scan results built up in front of him. There was no tech augmentation, but the soldier didn't seem to need it. He’d had enough biological enhancement to make him a dangerous opponent. Everything seemed to be practically perfect in every way.

And he even looks like he stepped off a recruiting poster
, Glen thought. There were no implants, nothing remotely comparable to Belinda’s augmentations, but that proved nothing. He wasn't foolish enough to believe an unarmed man was incapable of being dangerous.
But we have no grounds to bar him from the station
.

He sighed, then waved the soldier through the gate.

“Sir,” one of his subordinates called. “I think you should see this.”

Glen shrugged, then walked through the door into one of the side rooms. Each piece of luggage was scanned, then physically searched. Glen had enough experience to know that the scanners weren't always reliable, particularly when weapons and other pieces of equipment could be dismantled, leaving them looking harmless to automated systems. It took a human eye and mind to spot a disassembled weapon.

The officer was peering down at a large suitcase, which was open in front of him. Glen couldn't help noticing that most of its contents consisted of frilly underwear, all very definitely feminine despite the tag identifying the owner as a man. The officer was holding up a device that looked like a metallic octopus, complete with shiny tentacles. Glen shook his head in amused disbelief as he recognised it. It wasn't something he would have expected to find in a diplomatic delegation’s luggage.

“Sir,” the officer said. “What is it?”

“It's a sex toy,” Glen said. He looked down at the device, silently grateful that his people were wearing gloves. It wasn’t pleasant to consider where the device had been. “What else does he have?”

“Thirty pairs of underwear, two pants and shirts, nine pairs of socks and a number of VR simulation chips,” the officer said. “They’re all unmarked, but they have a blue border.”

“Which means they’re pornographic,” Glen mused. The Empire’s moral guardians hadn't even been able to put a tiny dent in sales of pornography, but they had managed to extract the concession that all pornographic datachips would be blue. Given that most porn was downloaded from the datanet, it was pretty much a pointless victory, but they seemed happy with it. “But it isn't something we can bitch about, really.”

He shrugged. “Pack up the bag, then pass it on,” he ordered. “We’re not here to be the moral guardians of anyone. Their ... perversions are of no concern to us as long as they’re not actively harmful to Island One or anyone living here.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer said.

Glen nodded. “What else have you found?”

“There's a complete list on the datanet,” the officer said, as he started to repack the bag, piece by piece. “Mostly clothes and a handful of pieces of personal equipment. The only really interesting discovery was several bottles of expensive alcohol, from Governor Standish’s batman.”

“Probably planning to drink in private,” Glen speculated. It didn’t really matter. “Just keep checking everything.”

He sighed as he walked back through the door. Security checks were a nightmare, even on a place as restricted as Island One. They annoyed visitors – he had no doubt that some of the guests were already planning to file complaints – while it was far too easy to miss something dangerous, or something that could become dangerous in the wrong hands. And the longer they worked, the sloppier his staff became. If he'd had more manpower he would have rotated them through on half-hourly shifts, just to ensure they stayed fresh.

His wristcom buzzed. “Glen, the boss wishes to see you,” Marshal Sitka Singh said. “I'm to take over here.”

“Understood,” Glen said. Marshal Sitka Singh was young, but she had enough experience and tact to handle the gates. “Tell her I’m on my way.”

He passed her as he walked through the hatch and into the security complex. He’d taken it over completely, pushing out half of Island One’s staff to another office, and equipped it with everything he'd been able to requisition from Terra Nova. It felt astonishingly good to have a full budget for once, but it was frustrating too. The one thing he needed – additional manpower – was the one thing he couldn't have.

Patty turned to face him as he entered the security lounge. Monitors were embedded in the walls, showing the live feed from hundreds of sensors scattered around the habitat. Some of them were in very intrusive places, leading him to wonder if they'd picked up his tryst with Belinda. Patty would have good reason to be annoyed with him if they had, even though relationships between superiors and subordinates were far from unknown in the Empire.

“It seems to be going well,” Patty said. “I assume everyone will be on the station by local nightfall?”

“I believe so,” Glen said. “So far, we haven't discovered anything
dangerous
.”

“They hardly need it,” Patty said, jerking a thump towards the near-orbit display. “There's enough firepower out there to turn Terra Nova into a floating cloud of ash.”

She shrugged. “The Governor will be hosting a dinner at nightfall for the guests, then they will get down to the nitty-gritty of actually trying to hammer out an agreement the following morning. You’ll be glad to hear you’re not invited to attend.”

“Thank God,” Glen said.

Patty gave him a thin-lipped smile. “I will be invited, of course,” she said, darkly. “Can you call me out after ... say, ten minutes?”

“I think that would upset the Governor,” Glen said. He was fairly sure she was joking. As the senior Marshal on Terra Nova, her presence would be mandatory. “You’ll just have to grin and bear it.”

“Rats,” Patty said. She shook her head. “You’ve done a good job, Glen. Just don’t let anything go wrong until the conference is over and we have a working agreement.”

“I’ll do my best,” Glen said. He glanced at his terminal as it bleeped. “We have five new complaints about the security procedures.”

“Copy them to me,” Patty said. “I’ll have a word with the Governor. Everyone agreed to intensive security procedures for entry and ... and these aren’t particularly intrusive.”

Glen nodded. The security procedures for entering prison – or a secure military base – were incredibly intrusive. A criminal could expect to be striped, prodded and then scanned down to subatomic levels before being allowed to enter the complex. The paranoid side of Glen’s mind insisted that it wasn't a bad idea, but the practical side knew it would be a diplomatic nightmare. There had to be a compromise between security and a diplomatic incident that would derail the conference.

“Keep an eye on things,” Patty ordered, finally. “And don't hesitate to alert me if you need assistance, even if it’s just superior verbal firepower.”

“I won't,” Glen promised. He smiled as she rose to her feet. “This place is astonishing.”

“And well beyond your expense allowance,” Patty said, “Enjoy it while you can.”

***

“We will be attending the dinner, of course,” Augustus said. He’d been astonished, but delighted to hear from Belinda again. “Well, I will be. Violet will be with the children of Island One.”

Belinda smiled. “There will be at least one other new child there,” she said. Helen had been invited too, somewhat to her surprise. Spacer or not, Helen was nowhere near as well-connected as the children who’d grown up on Island One. “Why didn't you keep Violet here?”

“I wanted to keep her with me,” Augustus said. “Do you think I did the right thing?”

“Parenting is a mix between too little oversight and too much,” Belinda said. It was possible to let one’s child grow up into a wild thing, but it was equally possible to smoother them with too much attention and oversight. “I think you gave her too much of the wrong oversight.”

“Oh,” Augustus said. He cleared his throat, loudly. “Do you have any insights into the guests?”

“None, apart from the fact they all want some kind of agreement,” Belinda said. She’d observed the visitors, but most of them were smart enough to know they were probably under observation and kept their comments bland and inoffensive. “But you can work with that, I think.”